Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
So what we consume physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually all
have a profound effect on who are what we are.
We're going to talk about tools for nourishing oneself and
a culture that often encourages over consumption and emotional suppression.
And the one and only joy strategist for self grace,
Harry is going to share some much needed insight on
(00:24):
what I call intentional consumption. So we've all heard this.
You know you are what you eat, right, which I
feel has evolved over the years too, you are what
you consume. How has the normalization of over consumption supercharged
this evolution?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yes, this topic again so potent. It's interesting. We had
the conversation to have this episode in a few weeks ago,
and last week my partner is best friend from high
school thirty eight years old, had a heart attack in
the thirty eight thirty eight, And this is becoming a
popular thing, people having heart attacks and strokes in their
(01:05):
thirties and forties. And what's fascinating is that there's so
many areas that we feel we really have agency over right,
and we like to believe that we're in charge of
our lives, but we don't even look at this concept,
but we ignorance is bliss through life with what we
consume on every level. And if we look at the
world and we pull back, we all have things to
(01:25):
say about obvious injustices, but we're not looking at the
trail of what led us to where we are now.
And how we eat and the way we eat is
literally a diet to be as exhausted, uncomfortable, and unaware
as it possibly can be. Seems like the perfect American
And so if that's working for you, you know, I
(01:46):
was reading somewhere. I think it was like the number
five pct products sold in pharmacies across the America is
laccident that some people believe that you're supposed to release
once a week. And so there's this concept that doctors
know and that we don't know. And as long as
they deem us healthy and we follow this food chart.
But who made that thing? You know, made that food chart?
(02:08):
I don't know if you ever heard that story that
corn flakes were created, because this is it Kelloggs. I
think he was a very important person in the world
and was upset that masturbation had gotten out of control,
and he felt it was the hormones from the meat
worked to create a product that people could have in
the morning and not be so enraged with passion.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
And so are you serious?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yes, this is a thing. Look this up. I'm not
making this up, you know. And this came prior to
the real obvious fake news. Not that well, it's not
fake news. So my point is is that all our
food that we eat now has been messed with. There's
very little food and if we just start to think
about it, anything that there's a lot of is no
longer real because it's we produced it to beyond its comprehension.
(02:54):
A chicken used to be a very small bird, not
too different than like a hand or a I can't
think of the other one. But now they're massive. Why
is that? And so these there's hormones in that, you know,
there's chemicals. And I'm not anti meat. I'm not even
promoting any particular diet. I really believe each one of
us is unique. But we don't. We're not good at
(03:15):
reading our own selves. You know, if you eat a
meal and you're exhausted after, there's something in there that's
not working for you. If you eat a meal and
you having gas, it didn't combine properly. But we're taught
to take a pail or to get something else, or
if you have body odor, that means that there's something
not working within your system. You wouldn't take your car
(03:36):
to the gas station that's fully filled and fuel it
up some more. But that's how we live. And so
this consciousness around what we put in our bodies, in
every orifice, every hole, is really gone to this place
of just immediate pleasure and very little concept of what
we actually need to sustain ourselves, to fuel ourselves and
(03:56):
to thrive. And there's so little education around that. It's funny.
Michelle Obama Aaron kind of laughed at her when she
went in the White House, and you know, all the
first people have to have something that that's their you know,
their mission. So she picked obesity and people thought that
that was so light in the ass, that concept. But
(04:17):
what people are understanding, and I get a lot of
flack for this, but I'm gonna say it. You know,
there's a lot of drugs pick your poison, but cocaine, sugar,
same bucket. You know, anything that you're numbing out with
and that causes o their health issues is an addiction.
And so we need to really just use this beautiful
awareness that we have that we can choose who we
(04:39):
will vote for, we can choose who we want to
be in relationship with, we can choose how we feel
inside our bodies. Let's just start there. Like, just think
about you know, if something comes ten to twenty times
from the away from its original source, it's not going
to work in your body, the same way that if
you put a prosthetic organ in, it's going to try
(04:59):
to fight it because it's not that the body understands.
And that's true with our emotions, digesting on undigested emotions,
letting other people's stuff in our bodies. So I'm not
saying all this stuff to make us feel sad. I'm
saying that to say we had agency. You know, we
have agency here. And if this is as we move
(05:19):
into these really difficult times, I'm hearing more people say
to me, Grace, I can't afford to buy organic anymore, Grace,
I can't eat healthy because and I say that's not true,
because first of all, organic, just like everything else, is
a label that's.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Not even real.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
But just start to think about how you want to
feel and build a little pipe chart around you of
all the things and treat yourself like a newborn. I
did for a few months after the pandemic, because after
I had COVID everything felt differ. So I took a
little book like when I had a newborn, and I
wrote every day when I had something new, how I
felt after did I go to the bathroom? How did
(05:53):
it make you feel? And I got so much information
about things that work and don't work for my body.
And so we all want to say, you know, black
excellence or queens or kings or goddesses, but we don't
treat ourselves like that at all.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
That part, that part, well, let me ask you this, then,
are there signs that your body or your spirit is
full of things that it was never meant to carry?
And I like to call this kind of like emotional
constipation because this is bigger than just what you consume
from a food standpoint, right, And I know you know that,
And that's the piece I really want us to get to.
(06:26):
Is this emotional constipation? Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So I yes, there was a point in my life
where I was living a very big life and I didn't.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I didn't know. I didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I didn't know this consciously. But now when I look back,
I understand that I was always snacking and I was
always looking for sugar. And when I look back at
that time of my life, I wasn't getting sweetness in
other places in my life, and so I was going
for the easiest, most socially acceptable, numbing out addiction, which
(06:58):
is feeding myself and feeding the hole that was there.
And so I prayed for almost a year, please because
I would be talking to you and then an hour later,
I have a bowl of ice cream. I didn't even remember.
I blacked out from there to the to the fridge.
And that might sound funny, but it's true part of
my defense mechanism. And so I prayed, show me the
(07:18):
pause so I can see what happens every time. And
I was at a family reunion this weekend and I
saw two instances where somebody had got into a confrontation
with a family member. It was not hungry at all,
and then immediately went without a snack. So we literally
feed ourselves and put things, you know, in our body
to not feel things that are making us feel the
(07:40):
things we really don't want to feel, because now we're
having all these issues in our body. I thought you
were going to ask me, like, what are the signs
that that is not working? But the signs that we
are emotional eating is every time you take your car
back to the Costco gas station to fill it up
and get the discount, and you're already full. And we
do that all day when we're over snacking or we're
(08:00):
going we had a full meal, but now we're gonna
get a five hundred ounce Starbucks with whipped cream as
a snack. We're just so we're just trying to.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Is there also an influence of our generational habits around
nourishment or coping and survival that's affecting how we feed
ourselves today one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I mean, we're pack animals. We do all these things
in facts. And it was funny I found right before
the pandemic, people were looking at their health more than
I've seen a long time, and we're looking at our planet.
Remember we banned straws. Although that seems so small little now,
there was a huge thing. And then I remember in
the middle of the pandemic first quadrant going to a
drug store and there being a wall they put like
(08:45):
a whole wall of Intimates products straight at the door.
Like people were like fuck, it. I'm gonna just eat
what I want to eat. The world's ending, So I
think it's generational what the comforts are, but also it's
what's happening in the world. We feel safe, are we're
not feeling safe? Are we feeling comfortable to try new things?
And it's definitely all those things combined. When we're in
(09:07):
a time of deep uncertainty, people are going to go
for comfort in any way possible, and there's nothing wrong
with that. But we got to find the things that
actually fill us and actually sustain and nourish us, not
just comfort us for the moment, and then afterwards we're
lethargic or we're exhausted, or where you don't have energy,
or our body is breaking down, or we're getting our
(09:27):
immune systems are short, which are the byproducts of those things.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, and I think that I would love to find
you know, what does absolute obsession with nourishing our body
and spirit and a healthy way look like?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The absolute obsession is it's the most basic. What does
it look like. It's eating. The first of all, our
stomachs are the size of our one fist everybody, So
if we're eating a meal that's a plate that's this
big already exceeding.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
We're exceeding capacity of what our body is intended to consume.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That's right, and so then you feel full. We have
itis got to open our pants all these things. That's
all signs that we are literally just eating for pleasure
and we're not. And what that's doing is making us lazy.
And going into other conversations we've had on intimacy, you know,
if you don't want to deal with people, if people
get in your nerves, if you don't want to say
(10:23):
that thing to that family member, it's much easier to
just well yourself out and sit yourself on the side.
And you've taken care of You've got all kinds of
hormones flying around that are making you feel better. And
so we have to we have to really get to
this concept that I want to know what it feels
like to actually feel great, like I actually want to
be thriving, and thriving can't just be like I look
(10:45):
hot and I'm going to a club. Thriving us to
be like inside is pristige, not just what I need,
but how I speak with integrity, how I hold people
in my heart, how I wish for other people, All
those things are things that we are are ferment and
decay inside our system.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
So and I love that. And so are there some
practical ways that you'd recommend we can start kind of
feeding ourselves differently on both sides of the fence.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Absolutely. I think the first thing to do back to
the other thing we talked about curiosity, What does your
body like like? I love garlic. I used to make
it with my kids that gross in the oven and
spread it on bread. And I narrow did all this
deep diving and learned that garlic and onions are medicine.
And I started to notice this is true. I started
doing my food journal, and I would get a metal
(11:31):
taste in my mouth every time I had garlic. So
I think the most simple way is to not make
life complicated. If you don't want to write it every day,
you could even open notes in your phone and just
use audio and say it. Put the date and just
say what you eat. And then the next day, well,
how did you feel? Did you use the bathroom? Did
you have night sweats? People don't realize all these things
are tied to are what we digest. Did you wake
(11:53):
up in a pool of sweat? Are you sweaty all day?
Are you uncomfortable? Are you having lots of gas? Do
you have indigestion? Those things down and then start to
cross out of your diet the things that give you
all those those things. And we can also create allergies.
So if you overeat something like too much cashews, you
you can create an allergy. So you can also just
(12:14):
give yourself a pause. So I think the simplest thing
is to just get aware, what are you, what did
you eat today, how do you feel tomorrow? And let
that digue for at least three weeks, and you'll start
to get a handle and see like what works and
what doesn't. That's the most easy overarching they need to do.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And the second if you could take but you could
take that as well. You could take that principle with
what you consume from a content standpoint as well.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I write every day at the end of the day,
what I ate, what I did, did I what did
I post my interactions? But that's just because I'm not
writing a book of an intimacy. So I'm really trying
to see, like am I more grumpy with my partner
when I've had too much food or when I've had
too little food or all those things. But yes, one
hundred percent, put all the consumption down and start to
(13:00):
see how you feel. And of course we know that
you'll start to realize when you're feeling jealous, when you
have fomo, when you have like oh, I went on
social media for twenty minutes. Of course afterwards I was
angry my so and so is getting married in three weeks.
But so to really see and you know, I call
them joy snacks. I hear a new word is glimmer.
(13:21):
But then you can start to even see when oh,
every day at three o'clock, I'm reaching for a coffee,
or I'm reaching for a dona. Okay, maybe I need
a song, a little three song dance party at that time,
or I need to have a little art thing, or
I need to call someone and watch comedy. And you
can start to put in to those places when you
see your patterns, what you need, that's joy and pleasure,
(13:43):
that's not necessarily over consumption.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
As usual. I thank you for your sharing and from
the practical, the theory, from the experience, all of it
is so helpful. Needa, and I thank you, thank you,
thank you, thank.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
You, thank you. Always summarize so well, the whole experience